What Is Not Art?

The quest to define "art" is a notoriously fraught endeavor, one that has occupied philosophers, artists, and critics for centuries, often culminating in throwig up one's hands in frustration and an admission of its inherent elusiveness. Nevertheless, various philosophical schools have emerged, each proposing distinct frameworks for understanding what grants an object or experience the status of art. In order to ask the question of what is not art, we need to first understand what people positively say is art.

Essentialism

Essentialism posits that art possesses intrinsic, identifiable qualities that are fundamental to its nature as art. This stance suggests that there are core formal or physical properties an object must exhibit to be classified as an artwork. Historically, these properties might have been associated with beauty, mimesis (the imitation of reality), skilled craftsmanship, or the successful evocation of specific emotions. For an essentialist, the "artness" resides within the object itself, independent of external factors such as the artist's intention or the viewer's interpretation, though these might influence its appreciation. Critics of essentialism point to the vast diversity of art forms across cultures and throughout history, arguing that no single set of inherent properties can encompass everything that has been legitimately considered art, especially with the advent of conceptual art where the idea can take precedence over physical manifestation.

Intentionalism

The intentionalist view suggests that art is defined not solely by its physical characteristics but by the crucial interplay between these properties and a viewer's mental impression or experience. According to this perspective, an object becomes art through a combination of its tangible form and the cognitive or affective response it elicits. This definition places emphasis on the reception of the artwork, implying that the viewer's engagement and the mental state induced by the object are constitutive of its artistic status. It differs from traditional artist-centric intentionalism, which would prioritize the artist's original aims or meanings. This viewer-oriented intentionalism highlights the subjective yet crucial element of how an object is perceived and processed mentally.

Functionalism

Functionalism asserts that an object or experience achieves the status of art by successfully fulfilling a specific purpose or function. The most commonly cited function is the provision of an aesthetic experience, which might involve feelings of pleasure, beauty, or profound engagement. However, art's functions can be broader, encompassing roles such as expressing emotion, conveying social or political commentary, inciting contemplation, fostering communal identity, or serving religious devotion. If an object is created with, and successfully achieves, one of these art-relevant functions, then it qualifies as art. A challenge for functionalism lies in defining what constitutes an "aesthetic experience" or an "art-relevant function" without circularity, and in accounting for art that may not seem to serve any obvious external purpose or even seeks to subvert typical artistic functions.

Historicism

The historicist perspective proposes that an object's status as art is determined by its relationship to pre existing artworks or art traditions. Something is considered art if it consciously engages with, builds upon, reacts against, or is otherwise intelligibly linked to the history of art. This view emphasizes art's evolving narrative, where new works gain meaning and status through their dialogue with the past. For historicists, understanding an object as art requires recognizing its place within this ongoing historical conversation. A key question for historicism is how the very first artworks (perhaps cave paintings) acquired their status, as they would have had no prior art to relate to, suggesting that historicism might be a necessary but not always sufficient condition.

Institutionalism

Philosophers like Arthur Danto and George Dickie have argued that art is what designated members of the "artworld" deem it to be, that art is inherently a social construction. The artworld comprises a complex social network of artists, critics, curators, art historians, gallery owners, collectors, and other "influential insiders" or "connoisseurs." According to Danto, to perceive something as art requires "an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld." This theory underscores the importance of context. The physical setting (like a gallery or museum, often referred to as a "white cube"), the artist's reputation, critical reviews, academic discourse, and market forces all contribute to an object's consecration as art. Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal presented as sculpture, is a classic example: its art status is largely conferred by its acceptance and discussion within the artworld, not by any inherent aesthetic property. While powerful in explaining how certain objects come to be accepted as art, institutionalism has faced criticism for potential circularity (art is what the artworld says is art, and the artworld is made up of people concerned with art) and for being potentially elitist or exclusionary.

The "Cluster Theory"

Recognizing the limitations of any single definition, the "cluster theory" of Berys Gaut suggests that art is defined by a collection of criteria, rather than a single necessary or sufficient condition. This perspective views "art" as a concept characterized by a "hodgepodge," or more formally, a weighted set of properties, many of which are drawn from the theories mentioned above. These might include aesthetic qualities, expressive properties, intellectual challenge, formal complexity, originality, skilled execution, belonging to an established art form, or the intention to create art. An object possessing a significant number, or a particularly salient combination, of these properties is more likely to be classified as art. This approach offers flexibility and acknowledges the multifaceted nature of art, accommodating a wider range of artistic phenomena.

Beyond these formal philosophical schools, there are other less formal perspectives. Some argue that an artist's declaration is paramount: "if an artist is calling something art, it’s art." Of course this definition is circular, and punts on the question of who or what can be an artist and what "declaration" is. Can an algorithm be an artist? If an artist does not explicitly call something art, is it not art?

And then there are neuroscientific approaches, such as that proposed by Johan Wagemans, who suggest art functions by "deliberately messing with" our brain's predictive processing. Artists create works that introduce incongruities and defy expectations, generating "prediction errors" that our brains find stimulating, thereby keeping our cognitive faculties nimble and potentially adjusting our perceptions of reality. This is an interesting perspective but it is largely non-predictive in helping classify art at least with our current understanding of consciousness and neuroscience.

The ontological status of "not-art" becomes a fascinating thought experiment in itself when we consider the extreme flexibility of what "art" can be. If one subscribes to highly permissive definitions—where virtually anything can be designated or experienced as art through sufficient intention, contextual framing, or institutional acceptance—then the category of things that can never be art shrinks to a near vanishing point, perhaps limited only by the boundaries of human perception or imagination. Certainly, countless objects and phenomena are "presently not art," existing outside the current frameworks of artistic presentation, discourse, or reception. However, the deeper question of whether "not-art" exists as a stable, inherent ontological category, rather than merely a descriptor for the current absence of art-conferring conditions or its exclusion from the stories we deem worth telling, remains profoundly contentious and central to the entire debate about art's definition.

The very expansiveness of certain definitions of art, particularly those rooted in institutional validation or an artist's simple declaration, brings the falsifiability of the concept of "not-art" into sharp focus. If the category of "art" can theoretically accommodate any object or phenomenon provided it receives the appropriate contextual framing or an artist's imprimatur, then establishing a stable, testable category of "not-art" becomes profoundly challenging. For the term "art" to retain descriptive utility, its logical opposite, "not-art," must represent a domain with discernible boundaries, however contested they may be. The principle of falsifiability suggests that a claim is empirically meaningful if one can conceive of an observation or argument that could refute it. If the assertion "this object is not art" can be perpetually overturned by a future shift in institutional consensus, as implied by institutionalism, or by a subsequent declaration from an individual identifying as an artist, then "not-art" as a definitive status is rendered highly provisional and difficult to falsify in any lasting sense. While one might observe that an object currently lacks artworld recognition or an artist's claim, the stronger assertion that it is inherently and permanently not art becomes almost impossible to defend if the criteria for art are entirely extrinsic and subject to change. Philosophical approaches like essentialism or functionalism, by contrast, offer more potential for falsifying a claim of "not-art"; if an object demonstrably lacks posited essential artistic properties or fails to fulfill an identified artistic function, one could argue for its "not-art" status, and this argument could itself be tested or refuted by demonstrating the presence of such properties or functions. Without such relatively stable, albeit debatable, criteria, if the state of "not-art" is not meaningfully falsifiable because almost anything could become art, then the term "art" itself risks diluting its semantic content to the point of near vacuity, becoming a label of arbitrary application rather than a descriptor of a distinguishable category of human creation or experience.

The challenge of establishing a falsifiable concept of "not-art" not only underscores the profound philosophical flexibility of defining "art" but also probes more deeply into fundamental aspects of human experience as social animals: specifically, what we collectively choose to value and the narratives we construct around those valuations. If "art" serves as a mechanism through which societies elevate certain objects, ideas, or experiences, imbuing them with significance and weaving them into a shared cultural tapestry, then "not-art" becomes less an intrinsic category and more a descriptor for those elements of existence currently residing outside this circle of deliberate attention and storytelling. It often encompasses the banal, the mundane, the aspects of daily life that have not yet been subjected to the transformative process of "making special," to borrow Ellen Dissanayake's term, or selected for inclusion in the grand narratives curated by social traditions or institutions.

This is however a fluid boundary reflecting our evolving priorities and the stories we deem worth telling. What is considered "not-art" today—the purely functional, the mass-produced, the everyday occurrence—can readily become the subject or medium of art tomorrow, precisely because our collective understanding of what merits deep contemplation or narrative exploration shifts. The philosophical slipperiness of defining art and not-art, therefore, is not merely an academic puzzle. It is a direct reflection of humanity's ongoing, dynamic process of sifting through the vastness of reality, selecting certain fragments, and through the multifaceted practices we call art, investing them with meaning, prompting reflection, and communicating values. The category of "not-art," in this light, is less about an inherent lack of potential aesthetic quality and more about its current position relative to our active, social endeavor of creating and perpetuating cultural significance through the stories we choose to tell about ourselves and the world. The pursuit of defining art, then, is inextricably linked to the continuous human quest to articulate what matters.